Actually, I was clamoring for keeping more inventory and other interesting gameplay elements in ME2. While I liked the solid shooter, I think they missed out on things that could have really added to the idea of character customization. Like keeping in the hybrid heat sinik/ammo system instead of the current system of basically ammo packs, or keeping in weapon mods separate from class powers, even more pieces of armor or at least more ways to customize pieces of armor.

It'll be the same three levels over and over again, you won't be able to customize anything, combat will all be twitch based with jumping/ducking added in and if you want to see the true ending you'll have to wait a year to spend 20 bucks on it as it will be DLC.

Also, Bioware is now known as BiowarEA.

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The game informer magazine with the debut article is out. Found info about the game in some gamefaqs posts and scans. Reposting the info here.

However, to respect people's wishes to go into the game fresh, I'll be much more careful with any story related content by putting all of it in spoiler tags. Bioware themselves are also going to be much more secret about the story and such, especially since they basically said everything that was going to happen in ME2 before it was released. But they promise big big payoffs to a great deal of things.

Gameplay info:RPG elements are being added back in, but not to the level of ME1. It sounds like the skills and such will be closer to how Dragon Age 2 handled them. They will be skill trees, instead of a linear power progression, and more powers in those trees.

Powers will evolve more than once as you put points into them.

Weapons are still like ME2, as in a smaller set list of weapons. However weapon mods are back in, but instead of generic mods you simply slot into a mod spot on a gun, you will be doing things like changing parts on the guns like scopes, barrels, and more. These changes will, of course, affect their attack properties, but also their appearance.

All classes can use any weapon now. However, each class only has a limited number of slots to carry weapons. So everyone can carry an assault rifle if they want, but only the soldier class can carry all the weapon types.

No multiplayer, but they're willing to consider that for spin offs and future games.

I kinda regret letting her get killed now. But I was more interested in seeing how Kaiden's story progressed in ME3.

Characters confirmed to appear:

Spoiler for Hiden:

Wrex, Mordin, Legion, and Anderson. We already know Joker and EDI appear again. Tricia Helfer is back voicing EDI as well from other sources.

Story (spoiler about how things start):

Spoiler for Hiden:

Shepard starts out on Earth, standing trial for his actions in Arrival. In the middle of this trial, the Reaper attack hits earth. From there, Shepard must escape to the Normandy, escape the solar system, and bring back help.

Oh, and Cerberus is trying to kill Shepard now, but they will not reveal why.

Description of awesome story moment that shows how epic things are, no plot spoiler, but still an awesome moment that you might want to see firsthand:

Spoiler for Hiden:

"Only other thing I realized I left out is that they watched a video of a segment involve a krogan vehicle train with Shepard riding along, and as it goes a Reaper comes down from the sky to attack. Shepard's vehicle is destoryed, and fighting the thing is impossible on foot. Then a Thresher Maw comes out of the ground and attacks the Reaper. The Thresher gets the upper hand by coiling itself around the Reaper, then drags it underground. It gets quiet, and seems to be over, then laser fire begins erupting from the ground, and Shepard decides this is a good place not to be. It then trails off into a description of how everything is so much bigger than the previous games."

It's also sounding like there is going to be a lot more endings this time, with more interesting ways of reaching those outcomes beyond some arbitrary loyalty status. The article indicates that who you take with you and who you actually have recruited can even determine what endings are available.

While I loved ME2, I thought the final mission of that missed many opportunities for interesting twists and role playing based on how you handled things. It could be pretty arbitrary in how things played out. Even things like plot critical ship upgrades were arbitrary affairs that you simply scanned for enough minerals and purchased. To not get those upgrades you basically just had to make a deliberate choice to screw yourself over.

My main ME + ME2 playthrough that I will carry through to ME3 should be interesting to see how my various choices effect the gameplay of it, I am in the middle of another one as a different class that had different choices so it will be good to see how they both play out.

Spoiler for Hiden:

My main has Ashley and Wrex both surviving, Ash was my ME LI but there is no mention on Miranda as she was my ME2 LI, so far no info on how she will be handled

some more magazine scans. I'm avoiding spoilers beyond any trailers, so some of them might be the same ones Turtle posted but just from looking at the thumbnails I'd say some of them are different as they definitely aren't Husks. there's also some further details on the page, but I skipped those too. since it's from the Gameinformer magazine they should be what Turtle posted.

« Last Edit: April 09, 2011, 04:27:44 PM by CeeKay »

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It's also sounding like there is going to be a lot more endings this time, with more interesting ways of reaching those outcomes beyond some arbitrary loyalty status. The article indicates that who you take with you and who you actually have recruited can even determine what endings are available.

since this is the last game in FemShep's story they can go all out without having to worry about having to work them into ME4. if future games look for a save game they'll probably just scan for certain flags instead of trying to cram everything in.

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I'm taking the liberty of going through that thread, stripping out anything remotely story spoilers and putting those behind spoiler tags, so people can read about the gameplay changes. So if you want to keep the story fresh, stay away from the spoilers below. Credit to Nirolak of neogaf for compiling this, I'm just sorting it for people who just want the gameplay info. Anything in parenthesis is my own commentary.

- The art design, especially for the enemies, looks waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay the hell different than previous games.

- You start off with most of your powers from ME2. (YAY! No more grinding for powers.)

- Most, if not all, major characters will return in some form. There will be select major characters for squadmates, while other characters will be temporary squadmates for singular missions (think like Liara in Lair of the Shadow Broker). Others will return in other roles.

- NG+ sound similar to ME2. Can continue playing, but can also 'loop back around' and do stuff over again.

- Shepard can roll, and can vault over obsticles without going into cover first. 'Peak' feature tweaked. Ladders for climbing up to higher areas. Notably bigger battlefields.

- Smarter AI that can 'plan' certain attacks on Shepard. BioWare feel that with the way ME2/ME3's combat is they need to compete with all the other shooters in the market, so improvements have to be made. (Almost anything is better than the AI in ME1 and 2, or most shooters these days. Hopefully this pans out, but I'm really not sure they have the processor cycles left over for more advanced AI. Maybe these AI planned attacks will be more like attack patterns where more than one AI will coordinate, but is mostly pre-planned based on situational cues. That might save some processor cycles while still having the desired effect of a coordinated enemy attacking)

- Game cinematics want to focus on the sense of scale, of both the Reapers and the war. Lots of big moments.

- Vehicles will be similar to ME2; not built into the main path of the game, but may return in some form as extras. (The new Hammerhead was kinda wasted in its introductory missions. But the Project Overlord use of it was actually pretty fun. Hopefully they will do more with it, but infantry gameplay is fine by me if the next bit of info pans out)

- Scanning is back but 'wont be at at all like ME2'. (Hopefully it will be more like what I wanted, which is a replacement for the Mako's exploration, rather than a bit of busy work scanning for arbitrary minerals for upgrades. I loved the little text blurbs that you got when you found little collectables of note)

- Dynamics of how choices effect the flow of the game more like the ending sequence of ME2 rather than the actual ME2 game, as in you'll make choices and see the differences quicker (or so they're promising). Quicker referencing of choices in the engine.

- Dont feel that there is a 'missing out on content' feel to the game if you happen to make decisions in previous games. No one play through necessarily 'better' than the other, just different.

- ME3 will be more difficult than ME2.

- BioWare want to make a Mass Effect MMO.

The spoilers below might spoil ME2 events, ME2 DLC events, or might hint at things you see in ME3. While nothing here is an outright spoiler, it's still story related info. You have been warned:

Spoiler for Hiden:

- Because of the above, those 'confirmed' characters (Liara, Garrus, etc) are not confirmed as permiment squad members. It just says they are playabe to some extent, so they could be for singular missions.

- 'Full scale war' feel to the game, about as 'dark' as ME2, though they consider ME2 to be 'sylised' dark or whatever the hell that means, while ME3 will be 'dark' in the sense that there is a huge war and a sense of hopelessness.

- Some key plot element that will reveal why the Reapers can be defeated. Dont want to reveal it until the game is out. Dont want the way the Reapers can be defeated obvious from the start. Want the progression of the game to give red herrings and a flow of information, so it starts hopeless but you slowly work out what needs to be done.

- As with the above, the reason TIM and Cerberus are after you is another plot element they want kept secret.

- Recruit the races woop woop. Most races dont want to join because they dont want to be ruined by the Reapers. Most races caught up in their own shit. EG: Visit Salarian homeworld, they're stuck in a conflict regarding the Genophage. Quarians trying to take back their homeworld. Shepard must try and find a way to resolve these conflicts to get the best support.

- Solutions to the above wont be easy or obvious, and based on past choices may even be impossible.

- People still dont believe Shepard that the Reapers are coming. They attack New York, London, Japan and others first.

- Earth is basically the first place the Reapers lay the smack down too, but they're spreading to other areas and shitting on everyone's parade.

- New Normandy, which is really a stripped and altered Normandy 2 by the Alliance.

I'm really interested in what Liara is going to bring to the table as the new Shadow Broker.

Mass Effect MMO? Well, its kinda obvious and would probably work pretty well, only...how many MMO's can a single company keep up and running? And both Starwars and ME being Scifi? I'm interested if they go ahead with it, but I don't see how it can be done.

As for powers - I don't agree - levelling is a huge part of the RPG aspect for me - I actually sometimes wish there were more choices though. Right now, its just what to select first, since you get everything eventually.

Erm, that's what ME3 is doing. There are more powers to choose from, arranged in more of a skill tree rather than linear progression, and each power can evolve into different versions more than once as you level up a particular power.

However, looking at the screenshots myself, the only thing I'm seeing is that a particular group of enemies have a more distinctive look to them that's closer to armor pieces like the Recon Hood from ME2, or even Halo armor. But it's still Mass Effect's style overall.

It's better to say that there's waaaaaaay more variety in enemies than ME1 and 2, and that's just from the screenshots in the article.

The change was probably that they updated the rendering engine so things look slightly different, and someone is just overstating it.

Liara's model is pretty much the same as the one in Shadow Broker, which was already a really good model, way more detailed and expressive than any other ME2 model. You can really see the difference in the DLC in any scenes with the two together, or just compare her original ME2 model with the one in the DLC.

Spoiler for Hiden:

Kaiden and Ashley both got the same uprezzing it seems, probably Shepard too. Hopefully they also worked on the facial animation as well.

FFS, not everything needs to made into an MMO. ME2 was the most tightly written, character-driven, single-player RPG we've had in years...can't we just get more of that?

I think it's been clear for a while that Mass Effect was planned as a trilogy, and then the series would go in a different direction with a different protagonist. I agree with Bioware that the ME universe would work well for an MMO, even though it would be just another MMORPG with the same mechanics we're used to (I mean, can't any MMORPG these days invent a new mechanic instead of rehashing the tired old tank/DPS/healer/buffer/debuffer stuff?).

I would be surprised if an MMO is all they're planning for this setting though.

Yeah, it's kinda my little apology for spoiling so much other story info for people last time around.

Anyway, some more new bits of information:- There will be more to melee combat this time, it's not a detailed system, but they play a larger role. As seen in some screenshots, some enemies are definitely carrying dedicated melee weapons (that both look cool and a little out of place).

- Shepard won't pickup or use enemy melee weapons, instead each player class also has its own special melee attack/ability. (Sounds like Vanguard players should have a lot more fun this time.)

- Expect more big scale cinematics.

What I want out of ME3's combat is that my soldier class character can have a wide range of guns, but each one highly customized for a single purpose. Being able to change out gun parts in ME3 sounds like a step in the right direction. I'm also glad they chose to make players able to carry any weapon type, this means they can balance out the weapons more in terms of making them unique, as opposed to having a clear progression of weapons like they did in ME2.

as opposed to having a clear progression of weapons like they did in ME2.

Speak for yourself. I thought the weapon progression in Mass Effect 2 was anything but clear. In fact, I still haven't figured it out since it presents us with no actual numbers for the weapons, only a vague description.

For the most part, basing it mainly on DPS and accuracy, almost every later gun, except the special guns you get half way through, are better assuming you have decent aim.

that's how I thought it was too, that the game just automatically gave you the best one available in a particular class. not that I remember ever really switching weapons with my soldier, I think I just stuck with the assault rifle through the whole game.

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Warning: the descriptions of those screenshots on the site contain potentially significant spoilers, both of a plot location and a story element itself (far more than the shots themselves, because they're pretty generic from a purely visual point of view).

Warning: the descriptions of those screenshots on the site contain potentially significant spoilers, both of a plot location and a story element itself (far more than the shots themselves, because they're pretty generic from a purely visual point of view).

- Ash

I hope I didn't spoil anything you didn't want to know. Both things have been mentioned in the early previews and seem to be major elements of the game. Unless you're under a total information blackout of the game, I think they'd both be difficult to avoid learning about.

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